A close associate of Putin’s from his days at the St. Petersburg mayor’s office, who spent two decades in key positions in the Kremlin and the government and performed the most important tasks of the president, fell into disgrace after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. Kozak was a supporter of a negotiated settlement. Putin has chosen war, and their positions on Ukraine have diverged.

An elderly woman in a lilac robe with bright yellow sunflowers and a scarf is crying while sitting in an armchair. She recorded a video message from the Ukrainian village of Bandurovo, in which she addresses a certain Mitya and asks to stop the war. In the 1960s, she was a teacher in the class where Mitya studied.

“Mitya, I tried to explain everything to you so that you understand. Now explain to me, child: what kind of war is this? Who needs it? upbringing, missed something… I don’t know what else to say. I don’t understand this war. And I can’t understand that you’re in the opposite camp – other than the one where your classmates, our people, and me too!” – she says with tears in Ukrainian.

Today, Mitya is Dmitry Nikolayevich Kozak, a high-ranking Kremlin official who has represented Russia in the negotiation process on Donbass since 2020. He was born and raised in Ukraine.

The woman pronouncing the words addressed to Kozak is his school class teacher Natalya Gavrilovna.

Dmitry Kozak is very close to Putin. The President entrusted him with many important tasks.

For the past few years, Kozak has worked as deputy head of the presidential administration in Russia. In this position, he was a key curator of the Ukrainian direction, in which the main goal of the Kremlin was to reintegrate through negotiations the two self-proclaimed formations controlled by pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions back into Ukraine. And do it on the terms of Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin has not been able to achieve its goals in eight years. And this despite the fact that after the recognition by the UN Security Council of the second Minsk agreements, the conclusion of which in 2015 Putin considered his personal unconditional victory, success seemed to him inevitable and only a matter of time.

After the beginning of the invasion of the Russian army into Ukraine on February 24, Kozak was de facto removed from the Ukrainian direction of work and excluded from the information agenda by the decision of the president, sources of the BBC Russian Service told. They attribute this to the dissatisfaction of the president, who finally lost his patience, became disillusioned with the diplomatic settlement, and relied on the military, forceful path.

About the disgrace of Kozak, the BBC was told by two high-ranking officials who personally knew him. They asked to remain anonymous due to concerns for their safety and future careers.

“Kozak, as a bureaucrat, advocated the continuation of work in the Normandy format, negotiations on the implementation of the Minsk agreements. He believed that more time was needed – and it would be possible to achieve some success. But Papa (this is how many Russian officials often call Vladimir Putin – Bi- BBC ) by this time was already in a different modality. Indeed, something like disgrace arose. At the Security Council, he (Kozak) was cut off rather rudely (Vladimir Putin – BBC), “the source said.

Despite the fact that the “Normandy format” and the “Minsk process” were completely nullified after the start of the war, it was Kozak who, by virtue of his position, was the logical choice as a representative in the negotiations on the conditions for ending the war, says the second interlocutor, referring to the unexpected appearance of Vladimir Medinsky at the head of the Russian delegation.

“The disappearance of Kozak from the agenda for Ukraine is a very strange story. If not disgraced, then what is it? For a moment, the man is the deputy head of the presidential administration, who has two specialized departments under his command,” the source notes.

The last mention of Dmitry Kozak in the context of Donbass and Ukraine refers to February 21, the day when an emergency meeting of the Security Council took place, at which all participants spoke in support of recognizing the independence of the DPR and LPR.

In January and February, the media wrote a lot about the negotiations on the implementation of the Minsk agreements, in which the official participated. However, since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there have been only a few media reports mentioning him . And not a single one in the context of Donbass.

At the moment, the Kremlin no longer needs Kozak’s services in the direction of work with the occupied Ukrainian territories.

“Now the policy there is supervised by Sergei Vladilenovich (Kiriyenko – BBC ). You saw that he already goes there, holds meetings,” another source close to the Kremlin said.

The BBC Russian Service failed to get a comment from Dmitry Kozak or his representative. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not respond to a request for comment.

One of the Kremlin employees told the BBC that it was the “Minsk format” that lost its relevance after February 24, and not Kozak that reduced his activity in work. He also commented on the information about the “disgrace”.

“Negotiations for which Kozak was responsible have ended. Period. How can one comment on the word ‘disgrace’ in the 21st century? We do not live under tsarism,” he said.

However, at the end of April, RBC wrote that in fact these changes had already taken place.

Over the past weeks, Kiriyenko, together with his subordinates, came to Donbass and Mariupol at least twice with the task of ensuring the celebration of May 9 and deciding on referendums on joining these territories to Russia.

Now Kozak’s set of powers in the Kremlin has been severely curtailed, the source of the BBC knows. Of those areas that he was formally entrusted with, not only Ukraine was withdrawn. Another important bloc – Transnistria – de facto was also taken from him and handed over to the security forces.

“Pridnestrovie is now being dealt with by completely different people who have nothing to do with civilians. There is no time for political settlement issues there now,” says a BBC source.

The situation in this unrecognized region also seriously deteriorated after February 24. Two weeks ago, unidentified people fired a grenade at the office of the local special service, the MGB, and damaged a couple of large repeater antennas.

Russia habitually blamed the West for these actions. Western intelligence, on the contrary, claims that the aggravation there is beneficial for the Kremlin, and one of Putin’s military goals is an attempt to break through a corridor from the Donbass to Transnistria. General Minnekaev , deputy commander of the troops of the Central Military District, also spoke about this.

Formally, two Kremlin divisions are still subordinate to Kozak – the department for border cooperation and the department for interregional and cultural relations with foreign countries (focuses work on the CIS countries). The previous curator of the separatist territories of Donbass controlled by Moscow, Vladislav Surkov, was in charge of only one of the two departments. After the arrival of Kozak, its functionality became twice as large as that of its predecessor.

The departments subordinate to him play a key role in shaping Moscow’s position and policy towards the former Soviet republics. In addition to Ukraine, the territories of Donbas not controlled by Kyiv, as well as Abkhazia and South Ossetia, they are working on Moldova and Transnistria.

As a result, since February 24, the deputy head of the administration has had an “internal exile”, they simply stopped calling him for most of the events, a BBC source familiar with the official clarifies. He was left with mostly desk work and a few projects. In particular, he “led” the elections in South Ossetia and continues to deal with Abkhazia.

“Dmitry Nikolaevich just goes to work. It was the same with Surkov when he was no longer invited to meetings and generally anywhere. Only one department there is doing something sluggishly in South Ossetia and Abkhazia,” the source says.

Dmitry Kozak was born in the Kirovograd region of Ukraine. And they know him there and still remember him. In 2021, the BBC Ukrainian service, while preparing a report from these places, was able to find Kozak’s school teacher and his distant relatives, who still live in the village of Bandurovo.

After graduating from school and serving in the GRU special forces, he moved to Leningrad and entered the law faculty at Leningrad State University. And after his graduation in transit through the prosecutor’s office, he got a job in the City Council of Leningrad. Since then, his career has gone uphill and has always been inextricably linked with Putin.

Over the years, Kozak has developed the image of a brutal peasant who can be entrusted with solving any issue, and he will “deal with” it.

He is credited with several key achievements in recent Russian history. During Vladimir Putin’s first term, Kozak helped the president wrest power from the then more independent and powerful governors, thus helping to build an authoritarian vertical in Russia.

In those same years, he was close to resolving the issue of Transnistria. The plan he developed provided for the transformation of Moldova into an “asymmetric federation”, in which Transnistria and Gagauzia would receive a special status with the ability to block the laws and decisions of Chisinau if they consider them unfavorable for themselves.

The signing of that document, most likely, would have stopped Moldova’s path to European integration, but Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin at the last moment refused to sign the Kozak plan.

In 2014 and 2015, Vladimir Putin included a similar mechanism with a “special status” for Donbass in the Minsk agreements.

Kozak has been dealing with Ukraine since 2014. He was instructed to integrate Crimea into Russia and deal with the economic relations between Russia and the self-proclaimed DNR and LNR.

The official was appointed to his current position at the beginning of 2020 after the resignation of Vladislav Surkov. Putin again entrusted him with the direction, which since the mid-2000s has become one of the key values of his entire long-term presidency.

Unlike Surkov, Kozak’s approach allowed for concessions, compromises, and even some political risk, Vedomosti wrote . He was ready to continue negotiations, but on February 21, at the now famous meeting of the Security Council in the Kremlin, Putin invited him to report his assessment of the negotiation process.

And Kozak, looking ahead of the agenda, just before the start of the war, tried to immediately decide on the future fate of Donbass.

“Vladimir Vladimirovich, here or later? I just wanted to answer the question about whether to annex or not to annex Donbass, what to do with it further, how to use it in negotiations with the West, because this is a very serious problem,” Kozak said, although then there was no talk about it. Putin stopped him and offered to discuss it later.

Kozak then looked like the only person with some kind of independent position of his own. But this is unlikely to calm his school teacher Natalya Gavrilovna.

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